Travels in and near NJ in quest of nature's beauty

Menu

Pipeline

Tonight, as I often do, I will borrow my friend Brenda Jones’ magnificent images of the short-eared owls of Lawrenceville’s broad preserve, the Pole Farm, to give you some sense of my Tuesday evening experience. Thank you, masterful Brenda!

Too often, these days, I need to remind people, “All that it takes, for evil to happen, is for good people to do nothing.”

I’ll paraphrase that reality to urge NJWILDBEAUTY READERS: “All that it takes, for miracles to happen, is for good people to be OUT THERE.”

So many hectic nights. So much ghastly weather. Yet, Tuesday I dashed in the door at 5:30. I threw my work clothes onto the floor and left them there; jumped into outdoor gear and went straight over to the Pole Farm.

There was sun and no rain and I hadn’t seen the short-eared owls since the day before my February meniscus tear last year.

Would they still be there, with all this inappropriate heat? Would they be in the field I might reach in those few moments before sundown? Would I recognize them? Was I too tired from work to dash along the wooded path? Would anyone else be on the observation platform to point out owls and harriers with hushed excitement, as last year?

Still on the woods-and-understory-framed trail by the red barn, I watched one slow thin shadow, the color of antique pewter, coast knowingly, determinedly along the reaped beige field to my right. One warbler hopped about in a shrub, but light was no use in identification. The shrubs that sheltered the small bird kept me from really seeing the raptor.

I made it to “Elaine’s Bench”, out-of-breath from almost running, weighty binoculars having beat a tattoo along my back.

There wasn’t another birder anywhere in sight.

But, across the reaped field, at the far tree line, that frieze that looks as though Lucy McVicker had drawn it with archival ink, two grey shadows emerged in tandem. Low to the ground, completely at peace, circling, circling. A pas de deux with wings instead of feet. Raptors, but not hunting.

There was still enough light that I could immerse myself in the delight of their grey/white lustre. The short-eared owls’ heads were the size of small grapefruits or large oranges. I felt, more than saw, their intensely focused eyes.

The leisured circling continued, as though they were from a faerie realm, able to dissolve every tension of my workday, my deep concern over the world situation.

A third ghostly floater emerged, low and flat and sure, from the far forest. The circling two danced their way across the field and out of sight.

I’ve been told that they are not actually hunting in these pre-sunset moments. That short-eared owls’ heads function as ears. As they coast and turn those white disks, they are hearing mice and voles that will become their feast when dark arrives.

No, I didn’t see bluebirds. But Brenda did, at the Pole Farm. They’ll be along any time now, as there are bluebird boxes hither and yon, on either side of the trail.

My flashlight proved nearly worthless, the sun had dropped so fast. I did not remember not to step on the horse manure, now on the right side for my return. I worried that my car would be locked in by an intense and righteous ranger.

Dashing back through the wooded end of the trail, I was suddenly deafened all over again by spring’s first peepers. The short-ears had made me forget all about that raucous miracle at entry.

Miracles. Always out there in Nature for us. But we do have to place ourselves where miracles can happen.

And I don’t have to remind NJWILDBEAUTY readers, that the Pole Farm is a preserve. That courageous people fought long and hard to save most of that land, to give it over to the wild creatures whose whom it rightfully is. To be EVER VIGILANT in terms of advocating and paying preservation, stewardship. To prevent PIPELINES!

Nature is essential. We are part of nature. In this Anthropocene Era, we ARE “The Sixth Extinction.” We turned that around re peregrines, osprey, eagles and condors.

“All that it takes, for evil to happen, is for good people to do nothing!” NEVER FORGET!

Probably all NJWILDBEAUTY readers know that, last Friday, the Pinelands Commission DARED approve the first pipeline in New Jersey’s Crown Jewel: The Pine Barrens. This one is “The South Jersey Gas Pipeline Project.” A pipeline by any name would smell as foul. The Pinelands Commission was founded to preserve, protect, even enhance this 1.1 million-acre wooded region, sited atop the legendary 17-trillion-gallion Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer of highest quality water.

Traditional Cranberry Harvest Tool

Former NJ Governors Brendan Byrne, Jim Florio and Christine Todd Whitman joined forces to file a Friend of Court Brief to overturn approval of the Pipeline. But the forces of greed have won anew, and New Jersey will never be the same. Our beautiful state is being turned into a Sacrifice Zone, and who is to arrest this destruction?

Essence of the Bogs, Chatsworth

Once, I lamented to a caller, “I’m a poet. What am I doing at the barricades?” The activist on the other end of the line retorted, “Carolyn, that’s where poets belong.”

I’m not good with barricades. Although I support and thrill to effective protest marches, they are beyond my physical/spiritual/mental/emotional strength.

Pinelands’ Pristine Tannic Waters, Batsto

The only arrows in my quiver are Pinelands poems. Here are a few, to remind NJWILDBEAUTY readers of what we are about to forfeit:

This was one of the original “Hot Poems by Cool Women”, a favorite of what we came to see as our poetic groupies, as our various new volumes reached the public through readings:

IT ALL STARTED

when we came upon

carpets of stars

cranberries in flower

trembling white below

the ice blue sky

along the hard-packed dikes

slumbrous bees

formed golden pyramids

on gleaming amber boxes

dawn’s pollinators

here to burst all bonds

course among broad acres

of waving stamens

at day’s end we stood on tiptoe

plucking first blued berries

from among the mauve and pink

at the tips of overarching bushes

tucked among hollies and sheep laurel

through thickets and tunnels

we made our way to the sea

mouths awash in warm berries

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

Cool Women, Volume I

RESURGENT

I long to slip into
peat water

watch my long legs turn
orange, then burnt sienna
bathed in tannins of old leaves
and newly desiccated needles
having steeped over the centuries
between primordial banks

I belong to the Pines and its peat
whether striding or swimming
requiring levels and mystery
–silent liquidities
–eloquent duskiness
even on bright days

over there, on a low branch
a slim snake twines
somnolent and sure

overhead, in the pine tops
winds echo ocean
near yet far

time keeps these waters warm
enough to welcome legs
too long denied the Pinelands

see how my limbs flicker and flash
–burnished in peatwater
–flames in the depths

I read words of Paul Muldoon and Gerry Stern and friends who later became the Cool Women, insisting that art is born in New Jersey beauty. Trampling her open spaces, defiling sightlines of the canal — for these travesties are visible even deep down upon her waters in a kayak — destroys not only habitat for essential wild creatures. It also spells the end of inspiration, the cessation of art catalyzed in these storied reaches.

Pipelines are nonessential, destructive, temporary in terms of jobs provided, and threaten ignition of the Pines and fouling of the pristine waters of the Pine Barrens.

Don’t let this happen. Use whatever arrows are in your quiver to preserve, protect, and even enhance our entire state!

Cranberries on the Vine, Chatsworth

Pine Barrens Just-Picked Dry-harvested Cranberries as Sauce Extraordinaire, Back Home

Which organization has come into being under the auspices of ever-militant, thoroughly vigilant Pinelands Preservation Alliance: JOIN THEM — they turn around damage to the Pines, week after week after week: http://www.pinelandsalliance.org

Without “The Iron in the Pines”, from forges such as Batsto and Allaire and Martha’s Furnace, and beyond, George Washington would not have had cannon balls nor wagon wheels for Revolutionary Battles. Pinelands shipbuilders and ship’s captains effectively fought the British and the Hessians, boldly advertising auctions of stores of captured ships in Philadelphia papers. Mullica Rivermen rowed with muffled oars to change the course of history. It is said, we would not have a country without the Mullica, without the Pine Barrens!

Come, wander upriver with Jeanette Hooban and me, on a leisurely November weekend afternoon. Suffuse yourselves with history, beauty, timelessness, tranquility, and, o, yes, the art pottery which was the trigger for our journey.

NJWILDBEAUTY readers may fully know that the Delaware is my sacred favorite river. That I have fought for the river and her valley since I moved to Bucks County in 1981, to discover that a vile PUMP was poised to remove 200 million gallons a day from this tidal miracle of ours. That we won the referendum, but lost the battle. The PUMP was built while I lived in France. But our well-publicized ceaseless battle against ‘progress’ and profit and, frankly, high powered GREED itself, cut the gallons that are taken daily to cool a nuclear power plant on the Susquehanna. My Congressman, Peter Kostmayer, fought to have what’s left of the Delaware named Wild and Scenic. The shad have blessed his efforts by returning.

Come wander the Delaware Valley northward, to a place before power plants and pumps.

This Week’s Riverwatch

November 18, 2016

Marches and rallies are held throughout the Delaware River Watershed in solidarity with those opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline project.

A company seeking to repair and replace a pipeline that runs under the Delaware River in South Jersey is seeking Clean Water Act permits.

Reservoir levels are dropping in the Delaware River Basin as drought conditions worsen.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network presents a weekly video news roundup of important stories affecting the Delaware River Watershed. Many people live along and depend on the Delaware River for their water supply, their livelihoods or for recreation. For many it’s a place to escape the stress of living in a densely populated area.

If the Delaware River touches you in some way you’ll want to know what’s happening in all the areas of the watershed. This weekly report will tell you about the important issues that affect the water quality, tributary streams and key habitat in the entire watershed from the Catskills to Cape May County and from Deposit to Delaware City.

You can see past editions of Riverwatch on the Delaware Riverkeeper Network’s YouTube Channel Here

“The earth is not a mechanism, but an organism.” Ed Abbey, The Journey Home

[Being in the Southwest] “is a treasure best enjoyed through the body and the spirit…, not through commercial plunder.” Ed Abbey, The Journey Home

“Are we going to ration the wilderness experience?” Ed Abbey, The Journey Home

Delicate Arch, Canyonlands, from Internet

The more I experience of man’s inhumanity to the Planet, –especially in overpopulated, pipe-line-threatened New Jersey–, the more I need Ed Abbey at my side.

Right now, horrified at the success of the multi-billion-dollar-funded Climate Change Deniers (see This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein), I’m reading Adventures with Ed by Jack Loeffler. The author hiked and ate and drank and discussed and even fought with Ed during his lifetime.

The two made a solemn pact that neither would let the other die in a hospital. A pledge Loeffler was barely able to keep, but did. The secret burial site required by Ed was facilitated, honored and often visited by Loeffler. He would bring beer, –one poured for Ed; one drunk by himself, whenever he made that pilgrimage.

Everything about which we have been warned by Naomi Klein and 350.org and James Hansen and and Elizabeth Kolbert and Bill McKibben and probably even Rachel Carson and even the Nobel Prize Committee and Al Gore, is described in chapter and verse of anything by and about Abbey.

A professed non-naturalist and determined “desert rat”, — who claimed to want to turn into a vulture upon dying–, Ed showed us the Southwest as the Poster Child for military/industrial/Big Coal/Big Gas/Big Copper ruinations.

McKibben issued his clarion call when The End of Nature was published in 1989. He is still calling. Abbey’s pivotal Desert Solitaire brought us to attention to commercial despoilations of our planet, especially in the Southwest, in 1968 Is anybody listening?

My first attention to the plight of our pPlanet came through Ed’s articles, as well as through his seminal non-fiction work, Desert Solitaire.

My first protests began and accelerated with the proposal to dam the Grand Canyon (!yes!) and another to build an enormous coal-fired generating station on the Kaiparowits Plateau, fouling the Four Corners region sacred to countless Indian tribes.

In those enlightened days, popular magazines published words and memorable images of the beauties we seemed fated to lose, as we now stand to lose New Jersey’s last green spaces to Pipelines conspiracies. That’s when I joined the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, and ‘adopted whales’ through a Provincetown non-profit, as my daughters’ main Christmas presents.

Ed, whom I did not yet ‘know’ from that one volume (still most successfully in print) said it first. Working as I do for D&R Greenway Land Trust, though I am speaking here as my very private, very opinionated self, I see perils to nature at every turn. Some of which incursions we can prevent, and in some cases turn around. Every year of the benighted 21st Century, it becomes more and more clear to me that Ed was a remarkable prophet, as well as a stirring author. (Read his novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, if you don’t believe me.)

Ed is carefully quoted by Jack Loeffler, –from a speech Abbey was asked to give to St. John’s College in Santa Fe, in his beloved New Mexico: “WILDERNESS IS WORTH SAVING FOR ITS OWN SAKE.” This was 1975. “Not for human benefit or pleasure. Wild things and wild places have a right to exist and to continue existing… Bees. birds, animals, snakes, buzzards, bugs, whatever, have a legal and moral right to continue. Even rocks have the moral right to continue being rocks.”

Those of you who read my US 1 (Business) Newspaper Cover Story on Four Shady Walks this week [princetoninfo.com], have absorbed my passion for the towering boulders of the Sourlands trail off Hopewell’s Greenwood Avenue. This haven taught me that not only trees and flowers, animals and insects, –but the very rocks themselves–, exude spirit. One is changed, –of course for the better–, in their midst. One is stilled, inspired and strengthened merely walking among them. Even more-so, sitting upon the most majestic rocks at the end of the blue trail, their ancient reality, their connection to creation, seeps into and surrounds one.

You who read this blog, who did read NJ WILD all those years with the Packet, have seen images of those rocks. They impact me like Chartres and Mt. St. Michel. But you must go there in timelessness. You must allow them to realize that you are open to their beings, and sometimes, even their messages. You might apologize aloud for humans who ferried them away and pulverized their eminences into gravel and Belgian blocks. To say nothing of the angry and misguided who defaced them with (now effaced, but never forgotten) wild graffiti last fall. You might also make amends to noble beech trees along the trail, scarred by (to me, inexplicable) human need to carve their initials upon their sacred skin.

Ed insists, and I have always agreed, the Bible has it wrong. “Man was NOT put here to have dominion over all things… The earth was here first, and all these living things before us.” Ed, also, –whose great joy was scrambling over rocks and boulders, mountains and peaks, preferably in sere desert landscapes–, goes on to tell the St. John’s students: “Is it not possible that rocks, hills, and mountains, may enjoy a sentience, a form of consciousness, which we humans cannot perceive, because of vastly different time scales?” His most outrageous proposition, which I find irresistible, is “…consider that we are thoughts in the minds of mountains, or that all humanity is a long, long thought.”

His (temporary, for Ed never gave UP on these themes) conclusion is, “As mind is to body, so is humanity to earth. We cannot dishonor one without dishonoring and destroying ourselves.”

The Intrepids and I turn together to Eleanor Roosevelt and Georgia O’Keeffe, to stiffen our spines for the battles demanded in the 21st Century, to carry on to victories small and large upon which the Planet’s very survival depends. Privately, every single year, I turn to Ed.

Ed ruminates on reverberations of research: “Science leads to technology…, and industry. It’s what [science] can lead to that could be bad…Things go wrong, and scientists (and the Army Corps of Engineers, adds Carolyn-of-New-Jersey) are called in to think up remedies. More and more, the system comes to rely upon remedial tinkering. It becomes ever more centralized until utter collapse is inevitable.” Outrageous Ed dares to say “the sooner, the better”, which quip I do not applaud. But his conclusion is essential, “Then, maybe, we can stamp out this blight, this cancer of industrialization.”

When our beautiful –state, with its marvelous green preserves of forest and farmland–, is reduced to a “What Exit?” joke… When everyone’s view of this entity formerly known as The Garden is a plethora of tanks and chimneys and wires and overpasses. When our sacred Shore is eyed by Big Power as one long limitless oilfield — it’s time to pay attention to Ed. Read him. Write letters to editors. Protest every pipeline suggestion/appropriation. Support your local land trusts, who are trying to turn the tide of ruination decried by Ed Abbey, the Hemingway of preservation.

This scene from Chatham, Massachusetts, which I call “Tethered Steeple” could also be titled “Tethered Flag.” This morning I passed the Lawrenceville Volunteer Fire Department, en route home from having kayaked to the Fishing Bridge and back. Our firemen had created their Memorial Day sign: “HOME OF THE FREE, BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE.”

Tethered Tower, Chatham, Mass.

Regular NJWILDBEAUTY readers know my grave concern for citizens’ rights in our land. My immediate thought, upon seeing that noble firehouse sign this morning was, “Well, they all seem to have died in vain.”

1776 1876 American Flag from Internet

I worry a great deal about what our Founding Fathers must think of vanished liberty in so-called America. About everyone’s being treated as a criminal in airports, and now even in museums and theatres (Manhattan, not yet in Princeton).

Lawrenceville Fire Department Mailbox

I am particularly devastated that land, –even that preserved in perpetuity-, is being punctured already with PIPELINE pipes of hideous yellow – color of 21st-Century tyranny.

PIPELINE: “We have met the enemy, and he is …” Fossil Fuel Corporations.

This land is no longer OUR LAND, as the lovely song insisted when we were fighting our own government to end the Vietnam War. “…and all around us, a voice was singing, this land was made for you and me.” Reality seems to me, “this land was made for fossil fuels!”

Cape May Point Flag at Half Mast in Gale

The fossil fuel industry would have it otherwise, as would many so-called ecological organizations, significantly funded by those whose motto is “Drill, Baby, Drill!”, (referred to by the brilliant author, Naomi Klein, as ‘Big Green.’ (This Changes Everything — Capitalism vs. the Climate”.)

Bay Head New Jersey Flag at Ocean where Sandy Landed, in high wind of April 2016

I don’t know what the rest of you do to counter these dire trends. What would George and Ben and John and Abigail and Thomas (Paine) and Thomas (Jefferson) have done, faced with the restrictions and constrictions of liberty in our times?

Nearby Town of Revolutionary Fervor, including only home owned by the rightfully fiery Thomas Paine

Please note how many of my excursion pictures seem to be taken in high winds… We should stop blaming the situation of ‘climate change’, and begin accurately targeting fossil fuel magnates, politicians bought by them, the organizations founded by and funded by them, who permit the continued ruination of our country, our Planet.

Chatham Light and Flag in Wild Pre-Storm Wind, 2015

Memorial Day used to be called ‘Decoration Day.’ It was created to honor Civil War dead, and there were supposedly two different such days, — one for the North and one for the South. Somehow they were, –after a suitable lapse of time–, merged into Memorial Day.

Maine Cemetery, Harpswell, Old Headstones in Late Light

As children, families went to the family graveyards, honoring deceased relatives. We did not, but many did, [and in Salem and Cumberland Counties of New Jersey, many still do], have a memorial meal at the grave site. When we visited, we cleaned the graves, weeded, watered, brought new flowers, and parents reminisced. Our ancestors lived on through these rituals.

“O, Say, Can You See?” at Chatham Fish Pier, October 2015

Turns out we were ‘doing it wrong,’, as this day is supposed to be about honoring those who died in war for our country.

Starry Stars “Old Glory” from Internet

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave – Lawrenceville’s 9/11 Heroes

“HOME OF THE FREE, BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE.”

Let’s KEEP it that way. Write legislators, editors, heads of ruinous Fossil Fuel organizations. There is a Women’s movement, called “Take Back the Night.”

We need to pledge OUR lives, OUR fortunes, OUR sacred honor, if there is any such entity in these troubled times.

We need a TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY mentality. Our land needs to be OUR land again.

Naomi Klein awarded 2016 Sydney Peace Prize.

We are very proud to share the news that Naomi has been awarded the 2016 Sydney Peace Prize by the Sydney Peace Foundation.

Naomi will be travelling to Sydney, Australia in November to accept the award and attend an array of events organised by the Sydney Peace Foundation.

Tickets to her award speech at the Sydney Town Hall on November 11th are available here.

We hope this will be a powerful opportunity to continue to bring conversations around social justice and climate change into the discourse in Australia as well as support the work of social movements across the region.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Naomi and look forward to welcoming her to Australia in November.

Edward Said London Lecture

Fossil fuels require sacrifice zones: they always have. And you can’t have a system built on sacrificial places and sacrificial people unless intellectual theories that justify their sacrifice exist and persist: from Manifest Destiny to Terra Nullius to Orientalism, from backward hillbillies to backward Indians. – Naomi Klein Edward Said London Lecture May 2016.

On May 3rd Naomi delivered the Edward Said London Lecture – if you haven’t had a chance yet I urge you to read or watch her powerful address.

NJWILDBEAUTY readers know I run away from holidays. Thanksgiving was no exception. Key birder, Mary Wood, and I set out for long empty Pinelands roads which lead past bogs and to ‘the B rig’ (Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge near Smithville.)

Brigantine Forest Trail – Sugar Sand and Pine Duff – on Thanksgiving

Just below Chatsworth (“The Heart of the Pines”) we came upon bogs being plowed and replanted, probably with berries that don’t ripen when all the other cranberries do. Sand has its own beauty, and we were grateful for that, and for wild tracks – one probably coyote, one definitely fox, amidst the sugar sand.

Preparing for new cranberry varieties

Sugar Sand Track

Wild Track

Legendary Haines Pine Island Cranberry Company near Chatsworth

Little did we know that the day’s highlight was just ahead. Against the far shore, on a tiny gin-clear lake, we found not one but four trumpeter swans.

Oler Lake was Swan Lake — see white dots in distance

Mary set up the scope and we spent about a half hour with these dignified beauties.

Trumpeter Swan Families from Internet

Her splendid optics revealed jet black beaks, not a glimmer of yellow lore that would have identified tundra swans. They swam in such unison that the four created one thin wake. One of the three was an immature, the grey of chinchilla fur, and every bit as dignified and splendid as those matures. No ‘ugly ducklings’ here!

Silence had surrounded us all the way down, and was almost audible in the Refuge. Peace was the order of the day, and impeccable beauty.

Mary and the Mute Swan, near Gull Tower

Mute swans swam singly or in couples, swirling here, circling there — no family groups and no thin wake here. Tiger-orange beaks shouting their presence, identifying this slightly smaller noble member of the swan family.

We were given hundreds of tundra swans, thousands of snow geese. This internet picture will do for you what my camera will not. I have been at the brig when the sky was whitened with snow geese; a blizzard, and every flake a snow goose here for the winter.

We were so warm, we set up and used the scope for great swathes of time, in light jackets, then shirtsleeves.

One of the stars of the day was a solo boat-tailed grackle. These pictures from the Internet give you some idea of their dignity. We could barely tear ourselves away from this heroic bird.

His breast was awash in every tone of blue on black the color of wet jet. Each minuscule movement created aurora-borealis-like shiftings and glowing along that dark expanse. Behind him shimmered limitless reaches of impoundments of varying salinities, peppered with black ducks and Northern pintails, shovelers and mallards beyond counting.

We had jokingly gone to the Brig to find the hot-line-reported scissor-tailed flycatcher. I’d seen one at Sandy Hook, one at Cape May, in my entire life. We did see and hear some unusual birds in shrubs and deciduous trees along the impoundments. Here’s what we should have found, but were unable to discover.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher from Internet

Day’s Stars – Trumpeter Swans from Internet

The monarchs of this kingdom proved to be those trumpeter swans — not only hither and yon throughout Brig waters, in small trim family groups. But also, at the end, the pond where we’d hoped for buffleheads, two coursing overhead in silent flight, and yet we could hear the air passing through those solid, stately wings.

Trumpeter Swans from Internet

Running away from holidays holds so many miracles. It was almost a day without turkeys, until Mary spotted a few stately, dark and noble gobblers scurrying through a remote stretch of those legendary, eponymous Pines. O, and come to think of it, we began the day in the cranberry bogs!

I will say again, a plethora of pipelines is poised to puncture the Pinelands. Highly flammable fuels will roar through those pipes, threatening not only that highly flammable forest, but also the sacred Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer of 17 trillion gallons of the healthiest water in America. Pipeline people insist that citizens have no choice. Wherever you are, prove the Pipeline people wrong! Write editors. Protest. Put up Signs. Write Congresspeople. Pipeline people have no concept of HABITAT!

A Princeton Garden Club has asked me to speak and show pictures on the Pine Barrens. I have written my talk, with all its logistical details. But my experience of the Pines is an idyllic region, dreamlike in beauty and Productivity. It is currently seriously imperiled (five PIPELINES are poised to thread their way through the ‘Barrens’ as we ‘speak’, and our governor is all FOR THIS DESTRUCTION, 17-trillion gallon aquifer of America’s finest waters and acres beyond counting of flammable pines or not.)

This is a typical scene along Route 563 near Chatsworth, the Heart of the Pines.

Marilyn Schmidt, Savior and Proprietress of Buzby’s General Store in Chatsowrth

This is my long-time friend, Marilyn Schmidt, former scientist, former realtor, former tax assessor, author, publisher, illustrator, and keeper of the Heart of the Pines. To learn more about the historic role of Buzby’s, which she saved in a tax sale and had named to the New Jersey and the National Registers of Historic Places, read John McPhee’s legendary The Pine Barrens.

Tomasello Windery Store at Smithville, above Atlantic City

The Pine Barrens even have their own winery, Tomasello’s, an outlet of which is visible from the Bakery at Smithville, near the Brigantine Wildlife Refuge, where NJWILDBEAUTY readers know I go all the time for major birding experiences.

An exquisite lake is Lake Oswego, ideal for kayaking, ringed with evergreens and marvelous wild plants, right down to the water.

Lake Oswego shortly after Hurricane (by any other name) Sandy

As the autumnal equinox approaches, I think of equinotical storms, not the least of which was the infamous Sandy. Our state is still recovering. Although the Brigantine and Lake Oswego and Scott’s Landing and Leed’s Point are very near Atlantic City, where Sandy came ashore — these are tough places, home of salt-of-the-earth people, and they were back on their feet remarkably soon. Here are a few images that give only the slightest clue as to what the land and the people endured, from what they have recovered: